Modern business practices often require that several persons meet on the telephone to engage in a conference call. The conference call has introduced certain applications and techniques that are superior to those found in a meeting with persons physically present in the same location. For example, a conference call attendee who is not participating at the moment may wish to mute their audio output and simply listen to the other conferencee. This allows the particular conferee to work on another project while still participating in the conference.
While the conference call has been substantially helpful in minimizing travel expenses and other costs associated with business over long distances, significant obstacles still remain in accomplishing many tasks with the same efficiency as one would in having a meeting with all persons in the same physical location. For example, while the ability to talk privately to a particular conferencee during a conference call can be provided by offline mechanisms such as text chat channels, this requires the coupling of ASCII entry and display capabilities with a voice terminal on both sides of the private conversation.